032 INTERVIEW
“Traditionally you would expect 60 tonnes as normal for hanging equipment in a stadium - but Lady
Gaga wanted to go to 100 tonnes for a complete system - it is a complete theatrical show on tour so it’s enormous.” - Marc Hendriks
and the end user can check the service record maintenance history and annual certification (Prolyte offers a lifetime warranty on the ProLyft hoists). Through it all there was an unmistakeable sense of urgency, the demand on Fokko’s time was palpable. Talk was about how quickly skilled welders can be trained in working with aluminium, the speed at which the Conical Couplers now come off the feed machines, the radically reduced production time for their StageDex staging systems, and so on. Everything seemed to be revving towards overdrive. For that reason, they have wasted little time attempting to protect their IP with expensive patents (although they do hold several). “We felt we just need to be faster to market than the competition. If China sees the word ‘copyright’, they interpret it as ‘right to copy’. We introduced the ‘turntable’ (rotating stage) at Prolight + Sound and by the time we got to PALM in China a couple of months later it had been copied. We believe it is better to put our energy into development.” Yet despite market pressures, the company is utterly without compromise when it comes to standards, training, certification and quality. Besides, Slatina hardly follows the model of dumping everything ‘commodity’ based to a Chinese factory (which seems to have become the production norm). Prolyte has continued the Litestructures legacy of equipping the facility with first class machinery. There are now approximately 80 employees in Romania, including an increase of welders from 10 to 65, while in General Manager Mihai Hlihor they have a first class overseer. Now operating at 100% capacity this is where all the bread and butter commercial 30-40 Series light to medium duty truss in this crowded and highly competitive market sector is produced, while the major roofs, large-scale trussing and ‘specials’ are produced from one of the dedicated workshops in Leek. Under the supervision of a dedicated brand manager, each of the four core Prolyte divisions will develop its own products for the appropriate niche markets - which now extend from museums and industrials to major stadium tours, theatres and the Ibiza summer dance season - with Litestructures evolving towards a project driven brand for installers and architects in other boutique areas such as retail. “While 80% of our distributor partners will focus on the entertainment market, and around 60% ends up in rental stock, with its lifetime guarantee, we will constantly look at different channels to reach different markets,” Fokko insisted. As he tries to manage the assimilation between the two companies in the tricky post-acquisition period, Fokko Smeding acknowledges the “fantastic chemistry” and sense of community that has developed during the last year. “We announced the merger at PLASA in 2010 and by the time we got to Frankfurt
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for Prolight+Sound the following spring everyone felt as one company and there was great camaraderie. Many people couldn’t believe we were about to merge.” There were 25-30 sales personnel alone on the stand, the company’s largest ever, and Prolyte threw a party each night to build team spirit. That Utopian vision was already becoming a reality.” But for all their competitive edge there remains deep concern about inferior, uncertificated products, perceptibly identical but potentially flawed. “A lot of these are good copies but maybe don’t have the extra braces or the same tolerances,” acknowledges Fokko. “It’s the added value that makes the difference.” He cited one incident in Poland where an uncertified trussing system collapsed half an hour before the show. “They are not aware of the safety tolerances, sometimes a rig looks like a much heavier load bearing structure than it really is, in some cases technicians are not aware of putting in ballast or guy wires.” In Prolyte’s case, the training is sold along with the roof, and their reference publication Prolyte Technical Matters is used as a standard work in many academic institutions. They know that there can be no cutting of corners and acknowledge that welding with aluminium is difficult. “We can speed up the process with training but there is a feeling of real craftsmanship about it.” Similarly the company invests heavily in tooling and automation, making all their own jigs, using robots to help produce staging and crowd barriers. And in terms of creating new structures, Litestructures aren’t having it all their own way. “I am constantly surprised at what is being invented,” continued Fokko. “Marc invented the pre-rigged truss for intelligent lights and rental companies pre-ordered [from
Marc Hendriks
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